“It’s a killer,” said Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato, speaking on a drug-prevention panel at Ocean County College this week. “It’s almost in every pack of heroin that we’re seeing right now. And the body can’t handle it.”

Fentanyl is a prescription drug used to treat severe pain, manage pain after surgery and to treat chronic pain in those who are physically tolerant to other opioids, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more powerful.

The drug is sold on the street in a powder form, on blotter paper or in pill form. It is getting ever more powerful. While the use of the opioid overdose antidote naloxone has saved hundreds since becoming more widely used in New Jersey in 2014, even double doses are only saving so many from fentanyl, authorities said.

“With the fentanyl for the most part, there’s no do-overs,” Kotowski said at the Ocean County College conference, which featured the DEA and the FBI-produced drug prevention film "Chasing the Dragon."

“Addicts are drawn to the best high. They have no idea what they’re smoking, snorting or swallowing and some have the attitude, well, some white knight will come with the white horse and administer Narcan. Fentanyl’s a little bit different. Fentanyl will definitely kill you.”

Heroin makes up a much greater percentage of overall drug deaths than in the past. That lines up with what experts on the opioid and heroin epidemic have been saying. As limits are placed on opioid prescriptions, those who entered into their addictions through the gateway of prescription painkillers increasingly choose the cheaper and more available alternative: heroin.

In 2013, the year drug deaths began spiraling upward, heroin played a role in 55 of the 112 drug deaths in Ocean County, according to Coronato's office.

The following year, heroin was detected in 70 of 101 drug deaths. In 2015, 77 out of 118 deaths involved heroin. And so far this year, heroin was found in 93 fatal drug overdose victims out of 118.

In 2013, there was one fentanyl-related death in Ocean County.

This year so far, there have been 27 deaths in which fentanyl was detected.

Those deaths cut across age groups. One victim was an 18-year-old Waretown woman, who died of fentanyl-laced heroin and another was a 77-year-old Toms River woman, who overdosed on fentanyl – possibly prescription fentanyl - and prescription medicines.

The number of drug products found by law enforcement to contain fentanyl in 27 states has risen from 1,015 samples in 2013 to 13,882 in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The global supply has expanded with the processing, and distribution of fentanyl and fentanyl-precursor chemicals by criminal organizations, the CDC said.